THIS WEEKEND
Size definitely mattered over the weekend as Godzilla
left a giant footprint at the box office,
though not nearly as mighty as the industry was expecting. The $120M budgeted
event film from Sony Pictures grossed a final tally of $55.7M over the
Friday-to-Monday holiday frame. Adding in pre-weekend ticket sales since
its Tuesday night sneak previews, Godzilla
has so far gobbled up $74.3M in six and
a half days. Sony's summer hopes were pinned to the giant lizard and the
studio made every effort to achieve the strongest possible opening gross
by unleashing the beast in a record 3,310 theaters on a total of 7,363
screens. That gave Godzilla a
per-theater average of $16,836 and a per-screen average of $7,569 for the
Friday-to-Sunday Memorial Day weekend.

With enough hype to
bring Mothra back to life, and a record-busting screencount, Godzilla
certainly had the necessary firepower
going into its release to topple industry records. However, the updated
monster movie fell far from reaching those goals. Last year, Steven Spielberg's
The Lost World crushed
the competition and set a new standard for this holiday with a $92.7M opening
which included the four-day weekend plus Thursday night previews. Like
Godzilla,
the dinosequel also saturated the marketplace but posted a much better
$27,480 per-theater average and a $14,566 per-screen average. Of course,
The Lost World
opened on a Friday while Godzilla opened
on a Wednesday which spread the opening weekend crowd over more days.

Godzilla,
for the most part, performed like the Memorial Day weekend blockbuster
from two years ago, Mission: Impossible.
That movie also opened on the Wednesday before the holiday and had Tuesday
night sneaks. The Tom Cruise spy thriller was the top gun over that year's
holiday frame collecting $56.8M over the four-day weekend and $74.9M over
the six and a half day week. Godzilla
ended up a notch below both of those figures making it the third-best Memorial
Day weekend in history. Sony's mutated beast also chomped on the same share
of ticket sales as Mission: Impossible.
Godzilla
accounted for 46.1% of the gross of the top ten while Mission
took in 46.7% during its opening weekend in 1996. The
Lost World, however, reigned supreme and
accounted for a mammoth 65.7% of ticket sales for the top ten titles during
its opening frame in 1997.

Sony began a seemingly
endless promotional campaign for Godzilla
last summer with teasers and followed
it up with a reported $50M marketing budget. Most industry observers were
expecting a minimum of $100M since its Tuesday opening. Jeff Blake, president
of Sony Pictures Releasing, stated that the studio was satisfied with the
performance of Godzilla and
that it "played above average with all audience segments and was through
the roof with kids."

The table below breaks
down the week's box office performance (in millions of U.S. dollars) for
the last three Memorial Day weekend blockbusters:

Title

TUE

WED

THU

FRI

SAT

SUN

MON

Weekend

Total

Theaters

Year

Godzilla

4.1

8.4

6.0

12.7

16.6

14.7

11.7

55.7

74.3

3,310

1998

The Lost World

-

-

2.6

21.6

24.4

26.1

18.0

90.1

92.7

3,281

1997

Mission: Impossible

3.4

8.4

6.3

13.1

16.7

15.6

11.4

56.8

74.9

3,012

1996

Sources: EDI, Exhibitor Relations, Sony Pictures
Releasing

Battling the likes
of Gamara, the Smog Monster. and Rodan was nothing compared to taking on
the enemies Godzilla faced
this weekend - harsh reviews and bad word-of-mouth. Created by the director/producer
team behind Independence Day,
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, Godzilla
had high expectations built-in, both creatively
and commercially. But the lizard picture, which starred Matthew Broderick,
Jean Reno, and Hank Azaria, was hammered from the beginning. The decision
to release Godzilla on
Wednesday instead of Friday certainly hurt its weekend gross as an early
negative buzz spread midweek killing a considerable amount of potential
weekend ticket sales. A Friday opening, like The
Lost World had last year, would have packed
the opening weekend crowd into a four-day period thereby virtually eliminating
the bad word-of-mouth from midweek.

Godzilla did
however post an impressive debut, regardless of expectations. Its Friday-to-Sunday
gross of $44M stands as the 8th largest three-day gross ever while its
$55.7M Friday-to-Monday tally is the third highest four-day opening. Also,
Godzilla's
debut was the biggest of the year and the largest for any movie since last
July's Men in Black,
also from Sony, which opened with a $51.1M three-day gross. For the studio,
MIB still
ranks as its best three-day opening while Godzilla
takes the crown as its biggest four-day
debut.

The next question is
- how will Godzilla fare
during the weeks ahead after its disappointing opening? All signs show
massive erosion. Godzilla should
end up being one of the most front-loaded blockbusters ever. With over
7,300 screens playing the lizard film over the long holiday weekend, almost
anyone who really wanted to see the picture could have done so. Bad word-of-mouth
will continue to spread and kill this movie quickly. Its best hopes lie
with kids, especially young boys. These moviegoers are the least likely
to be influenced by harsh critical reviews.

There are still many
more tacos for Godzilla to
devour, but a massive second weekend dropoff could lead to a final domestic
gross of $140-160M. Poor reviews, a bad buzz, and news of its subpar domestic
opening could also have devastating effects on the film's overseas performance.
And with Godzilla likely
to continue underperforming, upcoming releases can breathe a sigh of relief
as the coast will be much clearer when The
Truman Show, A
Perfect Murder, and Six
Days, Seven Nights open in early June.
The weekend results for Godzilla
will also be a major concern for Sony which was aiming for a franchise.
The cast members are signed on to do two more Godzilla
films, if the studio decides to make them.

Movie fans from all
across the United States and Canada had words for Godzilla.
Read what they had to say at Godzilla Sightings.

Elsewhere at the weekend
box office, Deep Impact,
which had held the top spot over the last two weeks, slipped to second
place with a $19.4M gross over the four-day period. Down just 17% from
last weekend's three-day gross, the comet picture boosted its total thus
far to $98.9M in 18 days and should surpass $100M on May 26. Considering
last weekend's dropoff of 44%, Deep Impact's
hold was very good and the film may have benefited from moviegoers who
intended to see Godzilla,
but instead chose an alternative after hearing bad things about it. The
Mimi Leder-directed thriller looks to be on course for a $120-140M final
gross.

Showing the legs of
a thoroughbred, The Horse Whisperer
bagged a superb $14.5M over the Friday-to-Monday frame raising its cumulative
gross to $33.1M in just 11 days. The Robert Redford film was up 6% from
last weekend's three-day opening gross. Disney wisely positioned the romantic
drama in May when it would be a strong counterprogramming choice to the
special effects-driven, male-oriented destruction movies Deep
Impact and Godzilla.
The tearjerker will face new competition next weekend when Sandra Bullock's
romantic comedy Hope Floats
opens.

Opening in fourth place
was Warren Beatty's Bulworth
with $10.5M over the four-day weekend. Playing in 2,045 precincts, the
political satire averaged a decent $5,142 per site. The debut was better
than the openings of Beatty's last two films 1994's Love
Affair ($5.4M) and 1991's Bugsy
($4.6M). Bulworth
was the third star-driven political satire of this year as it followed
Wag the Dog
and Primary Colors.
Wag the Dog,
starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Deniro, opened wide with $7.8M over
its three-day opening while Primary Colors,
starring John Travolta, launched its campaign with $12M. Bulworth
is likely to reach about $40M overall just like the two others.

Rounding out the top
five was the Warner Bros. kidpic Quest
for Camelot with $6.3M over the Friday-to-Monday
period boosting its total to $13.8M in 11 days. Up 4% from its three-day
debut last weekend, Camelot
took advantage of its core audience being out of school for the holiday.

The frame's other new
release, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
was mostly overlooked by moviegoers as it won only $4.3M over the long
weekend. Playing in only 1,126 locations, the Johnny Depp film averaged
a not-so-impressive $3,850 per theater and is likely to fade away quietly.

Holiday moviegoers
eagerly stepped aboard the mighty Titanic
for one more cruise. In its 23rd weekend,
the James Cameron epic saw a massive 74% boost and collected $3.7M over
the four-day weekend. Titanic crossed
the $575M mark on Saturday, its 156th day of release and now stands at
$577.1M. Continuing to prove that romance equals gold at the box office,
City of Angels posted
$3.2M in ticket sales (up 5% from last weekend) and pushed its cume to
a heavenly $70.5M.

Compared to my projections,
Godzilla
achieved sales that were much lower than my $90M forecast. Meanwhile, Bulworth
fared better than my $7M prediction and Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas was on par with
my $4M projection.

The top ten films grossed
$120.9M which was down 12% from last year when The
Lost World opened at number one with $92.7M,
and was down 1% from 1996 when Mission
Impossible shot to the top with $56.8M.

Be sure to check in
again on Thursday for a complete summary, including projections,
for next weekend's box office which will feature the important second frame
of Godzilla and
the openings of Hope Floats
and Almost Heroes.

Below are final
studio figures for the weekend. Click
on the title to jump to its official home page:

This column is updated three times each week
: Thursday (upcoming weekend's summary),
Sunday (post-weekend analysis with
estimates), and Monday night (actuals).
Source : Variety, EDI. Opinions expressed in this column are those solely
of the author.